The present invention relates to a local area network system (referred to as a xe2x80x9cLAN systemxe2x80x9d hereafter), and more particularly, to a LAN system including equipment shared and commonly used by a plurality of user terminals of the LAN system.
Conventionally, there has been known a LAN system employing an internet facsimile machine sharing system, as disclosed in the Japanese Patent Laid-open Publication No. HEI 2-172348, in which a single internet facsimile machine is connected with a plurality of user terminals through a LAN, through which the results of receipt and/or transmission of facsimile messages are notified to respective users by E-mail messages based on receiver identifying data and/or terminal identifying data. Accordingly, in the above-described conventional system, it is unnecessary for respective users to go to the internet facsimile machine to check whether a facsimile message has been received and/or whether a facsimile message was successfully transmitted.
Further, the conventional sharing system is constituted such that, if a trouble occurs in the facsimile machine, an error message is transmitted as an E-mail message to a terminal of a maintenance manager who is responsible for maintenance of the facsimile machine. Since the error conditions are notified by the E-mail messages, it is unnecessary for the maintenance manager to regularly go to the facsimile machine to check whether it is working well. In other words, the maintenance manager is required to go to the facsimile machine only when an error message is transmitted from the internet facsimile machine.
When the error message is transmitted from the facsimile machine to the maintenance manager, however, the maintenance manager may not be able to go to the facsimile machine immediately. In such a case, some other user might go to the facsimile machine to check receipt and/or transmission of a facsimile message, and at that time, the user might restore operation condition of the facsimile machine if the occurred error is an easy one, such as a shortage of paper.
In such a situation, the maintenance manager may go to the facsimile machine in order to recover the noticed error, if the maintenance manager does not know the error has been recovered, and then find that no errors have occurred. That is a waste of time for the maintenance manager, and further, if such a situation occurs again and again, the maintenance manager may tend to regard the error messages as incorrect ones even if the error messages have been transmitted due to actually occurred errors, which reduces reliability of the LAN system.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a LAN system capable of reducing the above-described problem in the conventional LAN system, and improving the reliability of the system.
For the above object, there is provided a local area network system which includes a plurality of user terminals, at least one shared equipment which is shared by said plurality of user terminals. The plurality of user terminals and at least one shared equipment are interconnected through a local area network. The LAN system is further provided with an error notifying system that notifies occurrence of an error to at least a predetermined one of said user terminals when an error occurs in at least one shared equipment, and an error recovery notifying system that notifies recovery of the error to the predetermined one of user terminals when the error has been recovered after the error notifying system notified the error to the predetermined one of the user terminals.
Since the recovery of the error is notified to the predetermined one of the user terminals (i.e., a maintenance manager""s terminal), the problem described above can be solved, and accordingly, the reliability of the LAN system will be improved.
According to another aspect of the invention, there is provided a local area network system including a plurality of user terminals and at least one shared equipment which is shared by the plurality of user terminals. The plurality of user terminals and at least one shared equipment are interconnected through a local area network. The LAN system is further provided with an error notifying system that transmits a first E-mail message indicating occurrence of an error to at least a predetermined one of the user terminals when an error occurs in at least one shared equipment, and an error recovery notifying system that transmits a second E-mail message indicating recovery of the error to the predetermined one of user terminals when the error is recovered after the error notifying system transmitted the first E-mail message to the predetermined user terminal.
Since the occurrence and recovery of an error is notified by E-mail, the user of the predetermined user terminal (e.g., a maintenance manager) can recognize the recovery without going to the shared equipment.
Preferably, the LAN system includes a mail server, and the predetermined one of the user terminals has a mail downloading system that regularly downloads newly arrived E-mail messages from the mail server. Further, the predetermined user terminal may be provided with a display, a first display system which displays an error message indicating occurrence of the error on said display when the first E-mail message is downloaded from the mail server, and a second display system which displays an error recovery message indicating recovery of the error on the display when the second E-mail message is downloaded from the mail server.
With this configuration, management of E-mail messages can be done easily, and the first and second E-mail messages can surely be transmitted to the predetermined user terminal (e.g., the maintenance manager""s terminal). Thus, the local area network system saves time for the maintenance manager.
Further, even if the maintenance manager leaves his or her terminal before the second E-mail message is received, he/she can recognize that someone else has recovered the error afterwards, and confirm that the first E-mail message (i.e., an error message) was correct. That improves reliability of the LAN system.
In particular, first display system may display a message window on the display, in which the error message is displayed. Optionally, the second display system may display the error recovery message in the same message window.
With this control, the maintenance manager can easily recognize that what error occurred and then recovered. This is convenient especially when a plurality of errors occurred and part of them have been recovered and the remaining errors are not recovered.
It is preferable that the error message is included in the first E-mail message. Optionally or alternatively, the error recovery message is included in the second E-mail message.
With this configuration, the predetermined terminal device is required to display the message as received, which reduces load to the CPU of the terminal device.
In a particular case, the local area network is connected to the internet, and the shared equipment is an internet facsimile machine which transmits and receives a facsimile message via the internet. In such a case, the internet facsimile machine may be capable of transmitting E-mail messages indicating results of transmission and receipt of facsimile messages to respective terminals, and preferably, the internet facsimile machine is capable of sending first and second E-mail messages.
With this system, since the shared equipment is capable of sending E-mail messages, it can be utilized to send the error messages and/or the error recovery messages.
Preferably, the error notifying system and the error recovery notifying system are provided in the shared equipment.
In this system, since the error messages and/or the error recovery messages are sent by the shared equipment, it can be easily identified by the user of the predetermined user terminal (e.g., the maintenance manager), based on the sender of the E-mail, that the messages are transmitted from the shared equipment and may include the error and/or error recovery messages.
The error notifying system may include an error message generating system that generates an error message in accordance with a type of an error occurred in the shared equipment.
In a particular case, the error message generating system may generate the error message by selecting one message from among a plurality of predetermined messages. Similarly, the error recovery notifying system may include an error recovery message generating system that generates an error recovery message upon recovery of the error occurred in the shared equipment. In a particular case, the error recovery message generating system may generate the error recovery message by selecting one message from among a plurality of predetermined messages.
According to another aspect of the invention, there is provided a local area network system, which is provided with:
a plurality of user terminals;
at least one shared equipment which is shared by said plurality of user terminals, said plurality of user terminals and said at least one shared equipment being interconnected through a local area network; and
an error recovery notifying system that notifies occurrence of an error in said shared equipment and recovery of the error to said at least a predetermined one of said user terminals when an error occurred and has been recovered.
Since the occurrence and recovery of an error is notified, the user of the predetermined user terminal can recognize that an error occurred actually, and then were recovered. Thus, reliability of the LAN system will not be lowered.
Optionally, the error recovery notifying system notifies the occurrence and recovery of the error by transmitting an E-mail message to said at least a predetermined one of said user terminals.